


The Book Bar Brawl

by HoneyMayBee



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is secretive, Bar Room Brawl, Crowley Needs a Hug (Good Omens), Crowley Tries (Good Omens), Dichromatic Crowley, Gen, He is thanked with 'Glass', It is out to kill me, Present Tense, to the head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 18:57:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21286595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneyMayBee/pseuds/HoneyMayBee
Summary: Crowley senses Aziraphale in danger and brings himself to him as he always does. It doesn't go well for him this time though.(Or: Aziraphale acquires his books in manners that should be frowned upon.)
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley/Pain
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43





	The Book Bar Brawl

“I’m terribly sorry, Dear Boy. I have to cancel our plans to have lunch at Lupo later this week. Something has come up and it needs my full attention. Perhaps I can make it up the week after that, or even the next day. You mention wanting to see that movie with the three-dimensional, cartoon toys. It had a Ranger, if I remember. There’s the cinema with the chairs you like too.”

“Cowboy, Angel. And it’sss fine, fine and all that. What’s the sudden appointment anyway? Another miracle demand from the upper department I take it?”

“Actually. It’s not with my side’s work at all. Rather, it’s with my work here.”

“Your work?”

“Yes.”

Crowley smiles against the rim of his glass and he gestures about Aziraphale’s store, “The work you never do anything with?”

Aziraphale puts down his own glass on the side table beside his chair. Crowley’s smile only widens as Aziraphale takes off his reading glasses and marks his book to close. He sees it join the glass. “I do more than just sell books here, Crowley.”

“You don’t sell them. You’d never sell them.”

“Like shipments. Or...or inventory. Cataloguing.” Aziraphale adds.

“Right. Anyhow. I’ll leave you to that. I get salted corn out of thisss. All good, Angel.” Crowley tips his head back to take another sip, finishing his third glass. “All good.”

***

It was not all good. 

The day of Aziraphale’s suppose ‘Appointment’ while in his apartment with his quivering plants, Crowley has a feeling. It’s a well-known one and is one he always heeds. Aziraphale is in danger. Aziraphale is about to get his head chopped off. Aziraphale is about to be shot by Nazis. Aziraphale is about to be hit by a bus. Aziraphale is about to-

Crowely brings up his fingers and snaps. He looks around at a pub in pandemonium. 

To his right, he hears Aziraphale gasp at something and Crowley is suplex by someone. He is thrown to the hardwood floor. He sees bright lights and his eyes focus on the ceiling, particularly the extravigate lamp feature that is above a ginormous, glass display full of wine bottles. It is behind an equally extravagant, light-colored bar. His clothes pull on his body and he is dragged up by a muscled man with a massive forehead. The man’s lips curl in a snarl at Crowley and Crowley squints behind his glasses.

What.

The man punch Crowley, sending him careening into and over the bar. Bottles and glasses follow him to the ground. Most became shards of glass except one of the more sturdier bottles. He collects himself and sees Aziraphale join him again to his right. He can see all about him that the pub has been losing its damn mind. Humans are climbing on top of one another, others are either alive, or dead on the floor. He can see that the pub has a second flooring with more humans fighting one another at the end near the wall. The banister gives away and they fall screaming, along with several tables and chairs, in front of the double-door entrance. 

The.

He looks to his right. Aziraphale is wearing the same outfit from this morning when he had met him for a walk in St.James. The same outfit he had been wearing for some years now. It has now some very out-landish or rather, some very un-Aziraphale additions. What Crowley guesses is an apron, It had the same tone as grass-green-, probably one of the unfortunate servers of this tavern; is tied neatly around his head as a bandana. His now-stained white sleeves of his button down with vest are rolled up. The cuffs fold over the sleeves just above the elbow. The helm of the shirt is tucked into his pants. His belt is missing. His prized coat is nowhere to be seen. 

Hell.

Azirapahle’s face is glowing with sweat underneath the bar’s excessive lighting. He is breathing heavily. There is smudges caking his face and what should of been dirt is seen all about his form. He seems to be in need of this rescue, surely.  
It’s been their custom though, at least he assumes it had been. His Angel would be in need of a last-minute rescue from him. And Aziraphale upon seeing him, would be full of nerves, and questioning, tempting smiles. The smile on Aziraphale’s face is happy, yes, but it is wide and full of teeth. It is confident and it is calculating. The same with his eyes, facing ahead without any fear, and it was making Crowley both excited, and nervous at once.

It’s a feeling he has before and will continue to get comfortably use to. 

He follows Aziraphale’s wild gaze to the front of the pub with the toppled tables. The burly man with the large forehead is getting up from the floor. Aziraphale must have done that, Crowley thinks. He saw the man grabs one of the chair’s broken off legs. He sees Aziraphale out from behind the lens of of his glasses. Azirpahale reaches behind him for the bottle. He smashes it against the tile floor. He then vaults over the counter with it as the man begins to charge. Crowley nearly cuts open his hands as he scrambles to look. 

The man brings up his makeshift weapon and swings it at Aziraphale. He is aiming for his neck, possibly his head. Aziraphale, much shorter than the human, thrust up his own at the man’s face. Crowley can’t see the man’s whole form beyond Aziraphale at this point with the close distance now between the two, but he can tell whose hit lands first. Azirapahle drops the bottle, ducks down, and grabs at the man’s legs. Crowley can see Forehead’s forehead covered in blood. It didn’t seem to faze the man at all, as he loops his arms under Aziraphale’s, and throws him back. It is the same move he had done to Crowley minutes ago. He hears Aziraphale cry out in shock. 

Crowley is processing, absorbing all of…..this. Aziraphale. In a Bar. Azirapahle is in a bar and they are both getting their celestial asses handed to them at the moment by a man who God Herself gave too much head to. Crowley adjusts his glass and fixes his jacket. He sees a book on the floor, where Aziraphale was moments ago. The cover is smooth, undamaged; it's probably the color of an egg if he is comparing. He picks it up. Why does he have this, What is Aziraphale even thinking? It didn't matter. He is going to join Aziraphale to show that man exactly what he was messing with. 

“Excuse me? Sir?”

A quick tap on his shoulder makes Crowley jerk his head to his left at a sweating, Asian man with what seems to be splinters of wood sticking out of his shoulder. Blood is running down his arm, but he didn’t seem to mind. If anything, his mind is more on Crowley himself. 

“Are...you...are you, uh, how many-how many fingers am I holding up?” The man stutters, holding up his hand to Crowley. Four fingers wiggling at him expectantly. 

“Wha?” It is all he can manage, really. At least until his makeshift brain catches up to his makeshift body. 

The man purses his lips and peaks over the counter, looks away from Crowley to look behind him, and then turns back to Crowley to look over his shoulder. He appears to Crowley, nervous. He runs a hand through his brown hair, lets out a harsh breath. “Listen, just ...God. Just-never mind. I mean-” His eyes keep shifting downwards. 

“Uh-” 

“-Just. Just. Oh my God. Please, why,-I-I’m a doctor.” He says abruptly, “Off-duty. I was over there.” He gestures with his head to the area of the counter where the register is, by the flap that is meant to be used to exit the server’s station proper. He brings down his hands and presses them into the floor, curling them into fists; being mindful of the glass there. “Saw you get hit, and you’ve been staring off, and slacking, and-”

The ‘Doctor’ suddenly brings up his closed fist and decks Crowley clean in his jaw, sending him back in a sputtering heap. He dives at him for the book, digging his nails into Crowley’s jacket, trying to get him to loosen his opposing, tightening grip on the book. He climbs onto Crowley, straddling him. He grabs at Crowley’s hands, prying at his fingers, he keeps ducking to try and nip at them.

Crowely gasps and tucks back his legs before kicking at the man. He goes for his abdomen, his stomach, his chest. Anywhere he can land a hit. The man hacks a sickly ‘Oof’. Spit flicks across Crowley’s glasses. Crowley hisses, snatches the man’s brown hair, yanks, and does the same back. The man’s dark eyes widen and bares his teeth at him. Any care in his eyes that Crowley saw before is gone. The man slaps a bloody hand hard against Crowley’s head, and Crowley’s feels a splitting sting spread all the way down to the bottom of his neck. He shoves the man off him for seconds to rub at the stuck spot. He feels a sticking, wet warmth. The glass from the floor, where the man had his…

He looks at the mess of glass spread over floor as well as the man’s foot coming up to meet his chin. His head flies back, taking the rest of his body with him. He slams into the shelve doors behind him. A second register on the counter above him dings in surprise. The man propels himself from the floor and slides on his knees, Crowley can see them ripping under the glass, and he plows into Crowley. The man begins on another attempt to get his grimy hands on him. Crowley can feel the handles on the door dig into his back. The register definitely decides this was enough force for it to come crashing down on them. It’s bells breaking and keys clattering out of the machine, joining the glass on the floor. The register wails with new errors and beeps as it hits the ground besides the two. 

The man, taking most of the impact, squeezes his face into a ugly, ugly, beat red. Then he screeches into Crowley’s ears. He lets go of Crowley’s arms and grabs at the neck above them, dragging his nails upward until they start to pull at the ears. They catch hold of glasses and tug. The bridge presses and cracks against Crowley’s nose. The lens form webs against Crowley’s eyelids. 

“Get off. Get off. Getoffgetoffgetoffgetoffgetoff!” Crowley roars.

The thought of Aziraphale before suddenly inspires him.

Crowley drops the book into his lap and the man goes to it like a magnet to metal. Crowley folds his legs and the man squirms under him. Crowley arches his back and reaches with his arms behind him to open the cupboard. He reaches blindly to find a bottle. It feels port-shape and his fingers curl around the lip. He gets a solid grip and pulls it from the bottom storage. He flings it down at the man’s shoulder. There’s more screaming, yet this means more distracting. Crowley throws his body to the left at the giant, glass display full of the bar’s prize, expensive, and vast collection of their finer wines. He uses one hand to hook at the corner of the display and uses the to grab a fist-full of the man’s hair again. The man unwillingly follows and the glass shatters at the impact. Wasted wine splashes the floor and them. The shards ricochet against the hard flooring and were piercing their skin and clothes. 

One lucky piece finds itself in the metal holding Crowley’s own glasses together. The bridge gives and the frames break in half on either side. They slide off his cheeks like tears and too, hit the floor.

The display starts collapsing. The light metal beams that held the structure are breaking apart, the screws not strong enough to keep it all together. The groaning of beams on the ceiling. The lights at the top flicker. The shelves all slide to the right, the bottles went along with Her wonderful idea of gravity. They fall off, one after the other. They explode upon impact to the floor. Then the shelves dip forward with the sudden, transferring weight. Crowley feels the man twist himself free of the tangling trap and sees him look up at the incoming finisher. His mouth opens to scream. Crowley turns away and pulls at the loosening corner to get away. He can already feel his legs getting crushed by shelves. The man gives out only a short sob before being muffled entirely. 

Crowley pulls himself free as the bar shelves collapse further. They were already burying the man, but Crowley was going to add to the pile. He scrambles to the counter. He latches on the edge and picks himself up, dragging the broken register with him. He hurls it down at the pile. The absolute mess of broken bottles, the metal rails, the now-unrecognizable electronic, the piles, and piles of glass. They are all smashing against one another in an unholy clash of sounds that make even Crowley’s head pound with pain. 

Though that could be the glass still lodge in his temple.

His attacker isn't moving to get back up. His hard breathing was ratting the pile. The display has yet to finish completely falling apart. So it settles on simply filling in any holes in the pile open up by the man’s pants. The man disappears underneath the rubble. What bottles barely survive the impact to the floor have cracks or holes in them; trickle or outright gush out a mix assortment of whites and reds. They pour over the pile like a river down a mountain made out sheer destruction. It carries through it and then pools over Crowley’s snakeskin shoes. He takes the dropped book from the floor before the wave can reach it. 

He nearly joins the man on the back on the floor too. He was a demon. This was a human and in spite of that, Crowley is gasping for air even faster. The man is lax underneath the dome of demolition. And Crowley is shaking. His neck burns. His jacket slides off his shoulders and is hanging off his elbows. The stitching in has been torn up, it couldn't keep its shape. What hasn’t lost its form was torn in shreds due to the death trap that is the floor. His humans can still find a way to surprise him. Not outmatch thankfully, but certainly overwhelm. 

‘Animals don’t go killing each other with clever machinery, Angel. Only humans do that.’

He’s wrong. Their humans can do what animals can. They can bite and claw their way out of many situations just as a cat can with a much bigger dog with much bigger jaws. And without the help of any innovative advancements.

Crowley actually resorts to using the machines himself this time. He look down. The movement making his neck scream pain at him in protest. The cash register is giving up on ever making it through this. It is split down the middle by a ugly, jagged zig-zag, a metal rod had jam its way into the plastic coating. It’s screen darkens to a deathly black. It gives one last dying beep that sinks silent into the rest of the quieting chaos that is before him.

Crowley coughs out a harsh breath then previously and steps onto the pile. It groans, both the pile and the man, under the sudden weight. He continues to ignore his body’s very informative and very enlightening complaints, especially the one being told to him by his reaching arm. He grabs one of the only intact bottles on the remaining shelf at the very top; a Château Musar Red. The capsule on it has a crack, but otherwise she’s in good condition. Whatever, it's perfect condition in comparison. 

Crowley tucks the bottle,as well the book under his arm, feeling the chill surface against his exposed skin. It is relieving. He wants to pull the cork out of it now and just drown away the leftover adrenaline that he shouldn’t have even been depending on for the scuffle. He did have to use that adrenaline now, to find someone to share it with, however. 

He limps with his aching legs off the slope and heads toward the flap of the counter to go find that someone and le-

Someone in dark clothes jumps out from between the shadows of the bar stools on the other side of the counter and tries to seize hold of his arm holding his spoils. They are pulling on Crowley’s arm and trying to use it to pull themselves over and take Crowley with them back onto the floor. Crowley looks at the other remaining cash register and is indisputably deciding it’s poor, predestined fate when another man enters into his vision. 

This one is elderly. With a was-then-white scarf and a clashing combination of a blue vest that went further than his hips, and a long sleeve of what looks to be a different color. The color of mustard dressing it seems. He isn’t real, Crowley decides. It is his brain failing him, look how pathetic this old senior is running. Looking is tough when the sight annoys his eyes. How he rams into woman that was partly over the counter. He sees them both go down and he only has a moment to even blink when the walking, excuse him, running offensive outfit pops up like an unwanted weed from the same spot. He has a hearty smile on his face that didn’t match his apparent age.

“Hi!”

“Udgh-uh,” Crowley replies.

“Got an extra one of those ‘er?” He extends an open hand at the book. 

Crowley says nothing.

“Oh Gosh, Golly. Righ’ no’. I am sorry.” The man drops his hand and brings up the other to tip what is a stunning addition to the whole getup, a white fedora, at him. “My name is Billy. Billy Gaztoope. I’m here uh, well, same as you. To-”

“Bill!” A voice calls out. Aziraphale. 

He blinks bleary eyed at his Angel. Aziraphale is absolutely mangled. His hair is dripping with blood. It is running down the back of his neck and draping over his shoulders like a king’s mantle. A head wound. The Chair. He really hadn't been able to avoid it then, it seems. His shirt is red now. The cotton seems to have absorbed any blood Aziraphale spilled, his or Forehead’s, during his own fight. He has a victorious aura about him. Crowley didn’t see Forehead with him or coming up behind him. 

Anywhere. 

“Ah! Mr.Fell! Look at ya, you righteous bastard of a man, you! I can’t believe the rat had the nerve to pull out his gun like ‘dat. And you,” Billy flails a bloody belt in the air; Aziraphale’s, “You had kick’ ‘im from underneath his Pinocchio-ass nose! And laughed doing so.” Billy howls and his body rattles with giggles. Aziraphale’s smile relaxes.

“Bill. I think I need be more concerned with you taking my clothing and brandishing it as a weapon.”

“Oi! Gregory there was coming at me with de knife. And what was I ‘ter do? Shank me up into little strings? He deserved the whipping i gave ‘im.” 

“Right. Well, You’re should be glad that isn’t my favorite of belts. 1798.”

“I don’ know where you ge’ these things, Mr.Fell. We should be seeing if they be peacefully selling these things.” He points to the book, the cause of all three of the men’s injuries, “Instead of dancing with death herself.”

Crowley can see Aziraphale press his lips together, ignoring to correct that metaphor, and follows Bill’s finger. His smile returns in full; warm and happy. However, it holds concerned; His eyebrows furrow.

“Oh. Crowley.” Crowley melts. “Whatever happen to you-”

“Edger happen. Saw ‘im sneak around the back of de bar after that new guy go’ ‘im in the shoulder and before he wen’ after you.” Bill answers for him.

“-,My Dear Boy. I am so sorry.” Aziraphale mummers softly. He walks up to Crowley and press a hand to his torn cheek. Crowley leans in to it, it was cool, it was gentle, it wasn’t trying to tear him apart. It does sting though, but he doesn’t care. He stares at his Angel and his mouth opens to ask anything that can enlighten him on ...on whatever that was.

“What. Did..Did E..Edger. Did he ssssteal tha-”

“Ah. Well, you see, Crowley, we were all trying to steal it.’

Crowley’s mouth closes.

“The better word would be ‘looting’. Perhaps ‘rescue’. I highly doubt almost any one of these ruffians would treat a first-edition, signed, such as this with any sort of delicacy.”

“Right you are, Mr. Fell. Burgling de would-be-burglars.”

“Precisely, Bill.”

Crowley continues to look at Aziraphale. He can feel a thumb stroke gently underneath his bruised eye. He wonders if he gives in, if he leans forward; would Aziraphale let him rest? Just for a little while. Right on his shoulder, it look soft, he looks soft. His knees buckle.

“Comes with the job of Book Dealing, I’m afraid. We hear of a desirable edition’s whereabouts and we chase it. Bill here informed me. A huge handoff with a seedy-sounding pay. So Bill,” Aziraphale gives a nod to Bill, “,and I; we had a stakeout. We had to. This one in particular is quite rare. Only sold for one whole month in Australia before it was banned by the general public for promoting human traf-” Aziraphale brings up his other hand to cup Crowley’s face, “Are you …? Did Edger get you in an unlikable spot? Oh Crowley. Crowley?” 

Crowley opens his mouth again, to tell his Angel that he is simply overwhelmed but his body didn’t want him to do anything, save that. Aziraphale’s face darkens with the rest of the room. The ringing in his ears, Aziraphale’s light, scolding tone, the rest of whatever tussle someone else was in throughout the tavern; They are all fading into a gentle hum.

“My Dear, you ought to be more aware of your surroundings. It is why I’m so nervous with you driving your ca-” A sharp intake of breath.

Crowley’s head hits something soft and feels it wrap around him.

**Author's Note:**

> Aziraphale purchases the tickets in advance and Bill sends Crowley a flower basket (Much to his displeasure and disgust)


End file.
